getting engaged to a terrible lemonade-drinking socialist who she winds up pushing into the river after he loses it when she poses nude for Mr Bryant.

Wait, if she’s into Mr. Bryant, why bring the lemonade-drinking socialist into things at all?

I have just formulated a cynical rule-of-thumb that in a RomCom, the boring fiancé exists to be dumped, and in a Drama, he’s there for the chastened heroine to settle for after all the people she’s really attracted to either die or turn out to be cads. I don’t know whether this means it’s actually preferable, if one happens to be a decent-but-boring type, to exist in a Drama.